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Researchers Make Spiders Produce Silk Strengthened With Graphene
An anonymous reader writes: Italian researchers in Trent have enabled 15 Pholcidae spiders to spin graphene-strengthened dragline silk just by spraying them with a solution containing carbon nanotubes and graphene flakes. The resulting fiber is as strong as Kevlar 49, and ranks among the most resilient and ductile in the world of manufacturing. But Emiliano Lepore's research has not succeeded in understanding by what process the spiders are able to incorporate the ambient materials into their webs. Since spider-farming is historically unproductive, the possibility of continuing the research on silk-worms has been presented.
Aside from the overtly disconcerting possibilities of nanotechnology-augmented spiders; does it strike anyone else as a matter for some potential concern that at least some organisms are quite permeable indeed to novel carbon structures?